How do you.....
 

..... define greatness?

Just wondering. I was having (another) Silent Witness fig... ummm, debate, and I realized that i can go on and on about why a particular horse is great but defining it altogether? A little tough.

Two rules..... what i don't want is an ultra-long soliloquy and no cliches allowed.

You know, short and to the point.

(Hemingwayesque). :D

Who wants to go first?

High performance and longevity.

Sustained high performance and longevity.

Six Grade 1 wins plus two Eclipse Awards.

Me, when i am in a good mood

It also helps to overcome adversity at a very high level.....like Seattle Slew in the Jockey Club Gold Cup and Ghostzapper when he was carried out 15 paths by Saint Liam in the Woodward.

The ability to win at a very high level when things don't go your own way.

My sex life when I was about one half of my current age.

Afleet Alex as well??

like Invasor in the Whitney - way too close to a fast pace, crazy middle move and still wins.



edit: lets not forget his Donn race... where is Jara now??

He never ran a fast race.

He was a lot faster than Afleet Alex but not as fast as the real greats of the past. To me he was pretty much as good as Cigar...though Cigar was a little faster on his best days.

Here's the problem as I see it, to many people who haven't followed the game for that long, and don't know the history, these horses are special....because relative to what they've seen they are, in fact, special. Now, in the short term there's nothing specifically wrong with that, but in relation to the true greats these horses are also rans. That doesn't mean they aren't very good horses, but it also doesn't put them in the rarified air of the true greats, and if you are going to attach the word " great " to a horse it is competing with history....and not just the personal history of the judger.

How bout this MMSC???

in today's state of racing we will never have another " great " horse.

What about a horse like Left Bank. Multiple Graded wins and track records at 2 different distances?

Track records are highly overrated. They are too much a function of track condition and not enough of a function of the horse's brilliance.

Must win at least one superbowl

For me, it's the ability to not just compete but win the majority of times that a horse faces the highest levels of his/her competition while either running fast times or earning high figures or preferrably both and doing it under a variety of different circumstances. I look at horses that travel well and horses that run on different kinds of surfaces and give them extra credit.

I really got the feeling that Invasor was just getting real good and could've been great. He was also the type that only ran as fast as necessary to win.
However, we could speculate all night about horses that were injured before thier prime.


As for Jarhead Jara, he is plucking oranges somewhere near Gulfstream.:)

If Silent Witness wasn't great he was very, very good...

Left Bank had a very good couple of months and a very disappointing couple of years.

To me, Silent Witness was like Lava Man. They were both dominant in their local area doing what they specialized in and beating the same opponents time and time again but left many questions unanswered when it came time to taking the show on the road. Sort of like Monashee, Hallowed Dreams, and Mister Frisky.

Whatever, Bold Ruler was a miler.

Seriously though, to expand on robfla's point, if one of our qualifications is going to be "longevity" or even "beat the best competition" then there will be no more great horses. Horses no longer stick around, and trainers and owners duck other stars more often than not.

Today, it MOSTLY boils down to talent in my eyes. Hence why I think Ghostzapper was great. He wasn't sturdy, he didn't beat any other great horses (although he beat some very good ones) and he certainly didn't hang around long. His talent level and versatility, however, were absurd. Ghostzapper was one of a kind, and when your ability is that far above anything that's run in the past decade, you're great.

People will disagree with me and put horses like Invasor or Pleasantly Perfect over Ghostzapper because they danced more dances, but I'll take brilliance over longevity when it's not truly longevity, but a very relative version of it.

Sucks that Invasor's legacy will always be lessened because his fastest race was a race in which no Beyer was published and everyone is always going to use the lack of a 120+ Beyer against him. He was a very good horse, too bad we didn't get to see him finish the year and possibly duplicate that World Cup performance.

How do you know his World Cup was such a high figure race?

I'll ask Beyer what number he would have given it.

so be it.
if you water down the qualifications, then it doesn't mean as much.
like i've seen written before on the subject, 'great isn't so great anymore'.

it's like what we now know as the steroids era in baseball....horses will be modern day greats, they can no longer be compared historically.

Comparisons to other times on the card relative to the time relationship of those same races in past years. Unless you split the race out and put it on its own variant and just make it a class figure it should have come up a very nice Beyer. I'd be curious what he'd have to say on it.

I somehow fail to 'appreciate' the quality of this horse. If Bernie handles the track better and/OR doesn't move prematurely, he gets dusted in the BC. Why is he even mentioned in a discussion of great horses?

This sounds like you're trying to repeat something someone else said.

Or else I'm just overtired.

No, I was saying that right after the race when I saw the time and started making the comparisons.

i think he may have entrapped as well...spiked a fever the next day too...:rolleyes:

He handled the track fine. He just got the usual rush-rush panic ride that Castellano has apparently patented. He's been doing it virtually every race at Gulfstream so far this meet.

He wasn't great but he belongs in that discussion long before Bernardini. Bernardini handled that track just fine, he just was beat by a better a horse.

I'm willing to accept that I'm overtired.

I'm not Bernardini's biggest fan, though he was very good, but he got an atrocious ride that day.

I'd love to hear what Beyer has to say on the issue. I have a tough time seeing how the figure could be under 120.

Well, considering he gave me Quip's fig for its last race today I imagine he can give me that fig.

Here are the raw times the past two years if you want to look at them. Obviously Dubai's configuration makes for tough comparisons especially on the 6 furlong straightaway.

Invasor - 1:59.97
Asiatic Boy - 1:48.82
Spring at Last - 1:36.16
Kelly's Landing - 1:10.34

Electrocutionist - 2:01.32
Discreet Cat - 1:48.59
Utopia - 1:35.88
Proud Tower Too - 1:09.86

Better horses don't need better setups to win. That's what makes them unique. I suggest you take a closer look at the race. The premature move is obvious.

Tough to extrapolate off the top of my head but it certainly feels like the track was faster last year than the prior year. Of course, Invasor and Premium Tap were a lot better than Brass Hat ( who also got a lousy ride that day ). Plus, it's hard to believe Discreet Cat wasn't more than 1 1/2 lengths faster than Asiatic Boy ( another brilliantly handled horse by the way....very clever not bringing him here after that race ).

Greatness = John Henry!!